


Breaking Point

by Hormonal_Trashbag



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gore, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:37:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5095985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hormonal_Trashbag/pseuds/Hormonal_Trashbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She watched, horrified, as her brother clashed with that damned Sadist--no, with Okita Sougo. Kamui had told her to back off; he was much more fascinated by facing the young samurai again than by fighting his little sister, though Kagura did not confuse his disinterest for him caring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

> I have something of a reputation in other fandoms for writing angst and creating general pain and misery for my readers. It's kind of amazing I've gone this long without writing some honest to god angst for Okikagu. You've been warned...? I guess.

She watched, horrified, as her brother clashed with that damned Sadist--no, with Okita Sougo. Kamui had told her to back off; he was much more fascinated by facing the young samurai again than by fighting his little sister, though Kagura did not confuse his disinterest for him caring. She was not sure what it was about the samurai that attracted Kamui’s attention, but as she stood off to the side, her chest tight with anxiety, she wished it would just end. It needed to, or she could very possibly lose someone.

When she had returned to the planet of her birth in search of her idiotic brother, Kagura hadn’t anticipated a reunion with the Shinsengumi. It seemed that as soon as they caught whiff of a big fight, they had chased after the scent like a pack of wolves. She hadn’t been prepared to see Sougo again so soon after their parting promise to both become stronger, but he appeared despite that, proudly donning his Shinsengumi uniform.

He was so damned proud--of course he had to step into her fight with Kamui. She hated that about him, it was going to get him killed. Considering who he was, Sougo would undoubtedly be satisfied to die if it was in battle.

Just as she suspected, he had little chance against Kamui, regardless of the fact he had the strongest sword arm in all the Shinsengumi. She sucked in a sharp gasp, holding the air in her lungs painfully as she watched him misstep, landing flat on his back. That was all the opening her brother needed.

Kamui planted a foot onto Sougo’s chest, and even several feet away, she could hear the symphonic snapping of several ribs breaking.

She rushed forward. She should have known better than to let him fight her brother.

“Stop!” She shrieked as she stumbled forward, tripping over rubble. “Just stop!”

Her brother smiled just as he always did though, taking Sougo’s forearm and yanking--hard enough to tear the limb from its socket. Words were impossible. Kagura screamed. In a matter of moments, she was overwhelmed with flashes of rage and grief.

“I guess a samurai really is still just a human,” Kamui commented with his usual nonchalance, his voice raising to be heard over Sougo’s agonized outcry, “They all come apart so easily.”

He tossed the arm towards her, Sougo’s hand still gripping his blade, a train of crimson trailing after in in an arc. It landed with a heavy thump of flesh, the sword clanging against the ground, and something crucial, deep inside her, snapped. It felt as if her spine, her very support system, had broken in two, and all she could feel was a scalding pain as she doubled over.

Neurons fired at hyper-speed, and before her mind, lethargic compared to her instincts, could reclaim control, she was attacking. Her voice gave an animalistic roar, and her lips and cheeks ached, the smile on her face stretching each muscle taut.

 

* * *

 

Gone.

Gone, gone, gone, _gone._

His arm was gone.

His brain, having yet to catch up with reality, tried to flex the muscles of a limb that lay several feet away. He hyperventilated through the pain of a crushed chest, blood pooling in his mouth and draining from the gruesome stump that remained. Sougo forced himself to sit, his remaining hand coming up to clench his bloodied shoulder.

He couldn’t die here, not on some depressing, rainy planet, and not at the hand of Kagura’s demented brother. Stupidly stubborn, he refused.

Yamazaki made his way over to him then, quickly applying emergency medical care. While there was little he could do to recover his lost arm, with a tourniquet around what was left of it, at least he didn’t have to worry about bleeding out. He spit crimson from his mouth, grimacing at the sticky tang before shouting at Yamazaki for blocking his view.

Sougo wanted to yell at China; she had been closer, but she had gone right past him, focussing on her brother instead. When he caught sight of her, however, whatever anger he felt died on his lips in a tortured gurgle.

All his years of knowing Kagura, he had never seen her fight quite like _that._ Both siblings were a dangerous flurry of swinging limbs, weighted with the intent to kill. Evidently, she had been holding back on him. A lot.

He could scarcely believe it, but she was on even grounds with Kamui. Sougo had to remind himself that however much she acted like an unconventional and all-around _strange_ teenage girl, she was still a member of one of the most deadly clans in the universe. He watched with clenched teeth as she battered her brother, taking hits without bothering to avoid them. An eery, bared-tooth smile he didn’t recognize distorted her pale face, her eyes wide and bulging.

Sougo had always teased her, calling her a monster, all the while not truly realizing how accurate the nicknames were. He felt breathless in a way that had nothing to do with his broken ribs or bloody, mangled stump. Unable to so much as stand, there was nothing he could do. No matter how much he wanted to pull her away and force her to snap out of it, he was utterly powerless.

He couldn’t stand it.

“Go stop her,” he grunted, “now.”

Yamazaki turned to look at him with a startled expression. “Sir?”

“She needs to be stopped,” he reiterated, authority ringing in his voice, “now.”

Before she reached the point of no return. Before she lost herself to the fury chained to her small, deceptively delicate body.

Before the girl he had stepped into a fight for was no more, and his sacrifice was rendered meaningless.

“Okita-san, I don’t think--”

“I told you to go!” He roared with uncharacteristic turbulence. Yamazaki jumped back, gaping at him in astonishment.

Sougo had never been known to yell, perhaps because there was so little he cared about enough to express himself. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was he cared about now, the thought of someone else beating an enemy he had been defeated by, or the thought of the China he had grown to know disappearing before his eyes, but he wanted her next to him, right then and there.

Selfishly, all he wanted was for her to hold the hand he had left and to tease him, to say that his body finally matched that lopsided personality of his.

Yamazaki made no sudden movements, and it became very clear that he had no intention of breaking up the two brawling Yato.

He bellowed louder, “SOMEBODY STOP THEM _NOW!”_ blood spurting from his mouth from overexertion.

An unexpected savior with an olive-green umbrella descended from a building above, creating a crater with his landing. Umibozu snatched the collars of either of his offspring, wrenching them apart by force. His daughter was sent flying before she could resist, and Sougo watched as she collided with concrete, and continued to watch as she stayed on the ground where she landed, vulnerable and limp.

He didn’t care about the father and son--they could tear each other to shreds and he would be completely satisfied, but she continued to remain motionless.

“Help me up,” he said.

Sougo swore, Yamazaki was going on his hit-list. “Sir, I don’t think you should be moving any time soon--”

“Then carry me,” he barked, adding when he saw Yamazaki’s hesitant look, “I just lost ten pounds, you can lift me.”

That was all it took, and Yamazaki was heaving him up and struggling over to where Kagura lay. Sougo wanted to snap that he needed to work on his core a bit more, but then he was being lowered again, and as soon as he was on his knees, he was clambering closer, spitting up blood to pull her onto his thighs. It was faint, but she was breathing.

He sighed, and the oxygen scraped his lungs on its way out, but she was fine and the relief that came with this knowledge was enough to submerge him.

Sougo sank against the wall, clutching her with his one arm, listening as she inhaled and exhaled. He paid Yamazaki no attention as he wrapped the stump excessively, and could almost ignore the unimaginable pain that was associated with each jostle of the bandage against his exposed flesh. He buried his face into her fragrant hair, smearing slick blood from his chapped lips into the vermillion locks, wincing with each orbit the gauze made around his shoulder.

“Go grab my _katana,”_ he ordered once Yamazaki finished, to which he could make no argument.

Finally, she stirred, and Sougo let his arm slacken enough for her to move. She met his grim, tired gaze with tears, the tips of her fingers gently grazing the very edge of his bandagers.

“I thought you died.”

He wanted to reply with a sarcastic, _clearly not,_ but words failed him. She looked different and fragile in a way she hadn’t been before.

“Your arm...” she croaked. “This is all my fault.”

 

* * *

 

His arm--his livelihood--snatched away so easily. Whatever solace she found in his being alive was swiftly flattened by the guilt she felt. If only she had been stronger, and had told him to fuck off when he decided to fight Kamui for her. She wondered if her brother understood the extent of his cruelty, to have physically cleaved the Shinsengumi’s strongest sword-arm.

He might never fight again, and Kagura new better than almost anyone how much he reveled in balancing his life on the sword.

She tucked her face in the crook of his neck, knowing it did little to hide the tears he had already seen, and let herself cry for him, her arms around his torso as she quietly repeated, “Your arm, Sougo, your arm--”

“I can get another one,” he uttered, his hand spread wide on her upper-back, each finger stretched out.

She nodded, pulling away to cradle his face, pallid with blood-loss in the palms of her hands. Without any doubt, or even a hint of wavering, she pressed her mouth to his, before feverishly stippling the top of his cheeks, the slope of his nose, his eyelids and forehead with her lips.

“I can’t believe you fought my idiot brother,” she managed between kisses, “Are you stupid? Are you trying to get killed? We both agreed no one was allowed to die, especially not to someone else.”

He chased her lips with his own, returning her gesture with broad brushstrokes against her face until she slowed down enough to let their mouthes meet again.

“I didn’t die,” he reminded her in a murmur as he carefully closed his teeth around her lower lip and sucked.

She nodded again, angling her head to the side as she delved her tongue into his mouth. “But I thought you did. You could have, dumbass.”

He clenched his fingers into a fist around her _qipao,_ mumbling, “You scared me too, Kagura.”

She had lost control of herself again, in that scrap against her brother. She bit her lip, glancing over to where her father was beating Kamui, quite literally, into the ground. Chaos was all around them as the conflict against the Harusame Pirates ensued. She hadn’t wanted much more than to prevent what was left of her family from killing each other, but it seemed she wasn’t strong enough, the way she was now.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sniffling, taking in his surprised expression.

She didn’t apologize often, and she wasn’t sorry just for scaring him. She had so much regret that it could barely be contained in her small body. Kagura knew that even if he did get a prosthetic, the rehabilitation period was lengthy and agonizing, especially for a human.

“So long as you know,” he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> So I tried to end with a slightly more positive note...I have the tendency to kill characters off and at least I didn't do that. I'm not even sure if this is really all that depressing, so I'll just have to wait and see what people think. Let me know? Feedback is greatly appreciated.


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